With every new thing that Samuel Beckett has written there has been the temptation to say "Here at last is the real Beckett: this is where it was all leading." That has allowed one again and again the retrospect needed in order to set out the true configuration of his work, to get his measure—in short, to have done with him. Until, unforgivably (can the man not take a hint?), more words of his arrive and we have to go through the process again. And now there is the awkward, obtrusive presence of Mal vu mal dit, which he has translated as Ill Seen Ill Said. Is there to be no end to it?

The design of Ill Seen Ill Said faces us once again with a mixture of the familiar and the strange. Ostensibly, an unnamed narrator strains to catch the detail of movement and appearance...